Main menu

If academic qualification and skill is the stepping stone for getting the job of computer engineer, it is experience that can help enhance computer engineer salary. Computer technology has entered so much in the life of people in modern society that every now and then new software becomes a requirement.

Academic Options

For pursuing the career of engineer one requires academic qualification and degrees. In fact there are two avenues open to anyone for getting such degrees. First one is the regular university degrees while the second one is online degrees. One can become computer with a regular degree obtained studying in a university or if he or she does not have the time, or are in a job, can obtain studying online. Fortunately for such people there are numerous online universities that offer such online degrees. Only note of caution is that before opting for one of the online institutions for studying computer courses, a little homework is imperative for the aspirant who wishes to pursue the computer career.

Job of Engineer

Primary task of the engineer is analyzing the requirements of the users. Once they analyze the requirements of the users, they would proceed on to designing, construction, testing, and maintain of the required software and the systems. In course of programming they tell the computer, almost verbatim, the way of functioning. In the process they also solve all the problems.

Characteristics for Good Engineer

A good engineer needs to be very strong in coding capabilities. Such things are necessary for developing effective algorithm and problem resolution through writing codes. In addition they require vision and innovative capabilities since most often they require to design new hardware as well as software or even an entire system. Another very important aspect of the job of software engineer is qualitative maintenance of the system that is already in place.

Computer Software Types

Very often the computer software engineer salary will depend on the job type. Mainly there are two types of engineers. One of them is the computer software applications engineer while the other is the computer system software. Main task of the former is construction, designing and maintenance of computer programs while of the later is construction and maintenance of the program for an organization that could include setting up of Internet.

Experience, skill, qualifications, and type of job entrusted will mainly decide the salaries to be paid to the computer software.

People who create computer software practice the art or craft or discipline that is software engineering. But what is software engineering “practice”? in a generic sense, practice is a collection of concepts, principles, methods, and tools that a software engineer calls upon on a daily basis. Practice allows managers to manage software projects and software engineers to build computer programs. Practice populates a software process model with the necessary technical and management how-to’s to get the job done. Practice transforms a haphazard unfocused approach into something that is more organized, more effective, and more likely to achieve success.

Core principles
The dictionary defines the word principle as “an important underlying law or assumption required in a system of thought” throughout this book we discuss principles at many different levels of abstraction. Some focus on software engineering as a whole, others consider a specific generic framework activity (e.g., customer communication), and still others focus on software engineering actions (e.g., architectural design) or technical tasks (e.g., write a usage scenario). Regardless of their level of focus, principles help us establish a mind set for solid software engineering practice. They are important for that reason.

First principle: the reason it all exists

A software system exists for one reason: to provide value to its users. All decisions should be made with this in mind. Before specifying a system requirement, before nothing a piece of system functionality, before determining the hardware platforms or development processes, ask yourself questions such as: does this add real value to the system? If the answer is no, don’t do it. All other principles support this one.

Software engineering, known as SE, is the development, design, maintenance and documentation of software by applying practices and various technologies from fields such as computer science, engineering, application domains, project management, digital asset management and interface design.

The conception, development and verification of a software system is what software engineering is all about. It is necessary to identify, define, realize and verify the resultant software’s required characteristics. Necessary testing is required for attributes such as reliability, functionality, testability, maintainability, ease of use, availability and portability. In software engineering, software can be verified to meet these requirements by having design and technical specifications prepared and implemented correctly. The characteristics of the software development process are also important in software engineering. Development itself, development duration and risks in software development are examples of such characteristics.

A computer uses software as part of its system that allows the hardware to operate properly. Software can be system software or application software. System software includes the main operating system and a variety of other utilities that enable the computer and its applications to run. Application software includes the computer programs and relevant documentation responsible for end-user data processing tasks. This kind of software is developed for such tasks as word processing, payroll, inventory and production control.

Software Development

A series of processes undertaken systematically to improve a business through using computerized information systems is what is known as software development. There are two major components to software development, which are systems analysis and design.

Systems analysis is the specification of what exactly the system is required to do, or the main objective. Design is about how to make the system do what is required of it. For system analysis, it is required to study the current system by certain procedures in order to gather and interpret data and facts, identify any problems and use this data to improve the system currently in use. System design refers to the process of developing a new system, concentrating heavily on the technical specifications and other specifications that make the system operations.

Software Development Life Cycle

Software Development Life Cycle, or SDLC, is a sequence of events done by designers, analysts and users to develop and execute an information system. There are a number of stages to this practice, which can overlap. The stages are Preliminary investigation (which is feasibility study), Determination of system requirements (which is analysis), Design of system, Development of software, System testing, System Implementation and System Maintenance in that order.